This was one strange movie. I thought it was a remake of Bad Lieutenant, the Abel Ferrara movie starring Harvey Keitel but after watching it I’m not sure. Anyway Nicolas Cage portrays a rather corrupt cop in New Orleans and the movie is directed by none other than Werner Herzog. Why a genius like Herzog would take on a project like this I don’t know. The result is a rather average thriller/crime movie. Or perhaps it’s a drama. I’m not sure.

Watching the cop fall apart through gambling, drug abuse and outbursts of anger was kind of entertaining due to Cage being rather good at this type of role. Also it was interesting to see some scenes from the streets of New Orleans. However I soon lost interest in the plot if there is one and the movie just rolled by towards the end.

After James Cameron stopped being involved in the Terminator franchise the whole story has taken a turn towards the ridiculous. This fourth movie was no exception even if it is a bit better than what I expected. Not that it’s not well made and all but it still doesn’t give me the feeling I used to have when watching the first two movies. Especially the first one. Ok, I was a lot younger when I first saw The Terminator but even today when I watch it again, it blows my mind.

The original version from the 1970’s managed to scare and disgust me when I first watched it on DVD some years ago. This remake version does not pack the same punch at all. Still it’s gory and the guys get what they deserve in the end but it leaves me with a feeling of why did I watch this?

The whole thing is too polished. The main character seems not to be very affected by what happens to her.Or perhaps it’s only me not getting it.

Could be. I still think the original is the better movie.

Paul Blart:Mall Cop

I liked this one. Probably because I’m a sucker for a movie where the main character turns out to be something other and better than the loser he seems to be at the start. Perhaps I identify with characters like that. Perhaps I wish I’d turn out to be the hero who saves the day and gets the girl at the end. In my dreams I do. Only in my dreams.

However this movie tells the story of a rather fat man who wants to be a police officer but at the start of the movie he is working as a security guard at a shopping mall. An unarmed security guard. He rolls around on a Segway and performs his duty but wishes to be more important and less rídiculed. Meets a nice girl working at the mall and at first manages to mess it all up.

Then the story turns into less of a comedy when some gang of robbers show up to steal the money from all the stores at closing time on Black Friday. The fat security guard is the only man standing in the way of the robbers reaching their goal. Of course there’s a happy ending.

I enjoyed the movie without it being anything special. I’ve seen this kind of story many times in different settings but I still find it worth watching. As I said, I’m a sucker for movies about losers becoming heroes and finally making their dreams real. I guess I always keep hoping it will happen to me too. Keep dreaming…

The Expendables

A Sly Stallone (director, writer and star) vehicle about a gang of guns for hire who are recruited to save a small South American island nation from some ex-CIA thugs and a dictator.

Looks and feels like all the 1980’s action movies Stallone used to star in. Lots of other – younger – action stars play parts in this movie and some older heroes make small appearances.

Shallow and full of oneliners instead of any real dialogue, the movie moves fast and serves up a lot of action scenes. However the action tends to be a bit monotonous and in the end I don’t really care what happens, who wins, who lives or how high the body count goes.

Is it entertaining? Mostly. If you suspend your brain for the duration of the movie. Enough said.

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I finally got this movie for my collection today. The quality is not perfect but it is at least good enough to make the viewing enjoyable. For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, I will now explain.

The Swan is a movie starring Grace Kelly, and it is a movie which has not been easy to find in a dvd version. But recently I managed to find one through Amazon.com. Today it arrived in my mailbox and I have watched a small portion of it.

For me as a Grace Kelly fan and collector of her movies, adding this movie to my collection means I am now only one movie short of having them all. The only one still missing is “Green Fire“, which can be found in VHS format but I am still waiting for it to be released as a dvd.

I am also waiting for a new release of the great movie To Catch a Thief which is said to be an improvement compared to the previously released versions.

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Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe. I can’t say I really liked it. It was too short and got to the “happy” end too fast after a long build-up that was good but in the end turned out to promise more than the story could deliver.

The movie seems to be based on the director’s own experiences as a young rock journalist in the 1970’s. I have no idea if that is the case or not ,and it doesn’t add anything to the viewing of the movie either way.

The basic conflict of the story is how to avoid being seduced by the artists and bands you are supposed to cover as a journalist while traveling with them and getting to know them. There is also a sort of love story and some family issues added to spice the movie up so that the film is not all about riding a tour bus and hanging out in hotel rooms. There is not a lot of music in the movie, and even less writing and these are some of the problems, but the major problem is that the movie doesn’t have a point.

I can’t understand how it became a hit and got good reviews. Ok, the acting is good and the set decorators have made a great effort to make the 1970’s look alive and real but that’s all. Maybe one needs to be more of a fan of rock music and/or of rock journalism to really care about this film.

Anyway I like a lot of rock music, I like to read good writing about rock music too, and my brother has told me some stories from his tours ar0und Sweden in the 1970’s but I still don’t think Almost Famous is more than almost great.

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Not a lot if you ask me. Who else would I be asking ? I don’t know. I am the only one here so I guess you must be talking to me.

Snowed on Friday. Melted on Saturday and melts today too. I went out to get some food from the not so local market and it was not done easily. First to find everything in that huge place and then stand in line to get to pay for it and take it back home. Why must everyone go shopping on Saturday afternoon ? Well after that I didn’t do much else. I played a few rounds of golf on the computer and watched the duck movie again. The night before I watched the rat movie [Rataouille] again. I just can’t get enough of any of those movies.

Late night chat with my old friend on Friday. It was nice as it usually is. Not much to add to that more than how happy I am to still have that friendship. There was a time when it seemed it was gone but luckily it was possible to save it.

Today is a lazy Sunday. I slept a long time and have not done anything useful at all yet. Tomorrow I go driving again. I wonder if I will ever manage to get that license or not.

Yes, I am back again. Not what you expected but here I am. And today I have something on my mind again. Just a simple little story about what I found in my mailbox this morning. A new copy of the recently released region 1 DVD of the movie Howard the Duck. I know I have written about it before in this blog. But the new thing about this DVD is the bonus documentary featuring new interviews with some of the cast and crew members of the movie. They tell the story of the making of the movie and of their reactions to it being a box office disaster and given many bad reviews. The movie was a bomb, no doubt, but it also have had a following of loyal fans from the beginning. I am one of them. From the start many years ago, in the 1980’s, I liked the movie. Not many did then. But I am happy to find out now that the people who made the movie still like it and are proud of the work they put into it. And I am glad the movie is finally released on DVD so that old and new fans can watch it again or for the first time.

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MoonieZ

Welcome ! I'm the author of this blog. I write about my daily life, my interests and the world around me. Sometimes I also have a little fun with words. Just so everyone knows that not every word posted here is true.